The purpose of this report is to improve understanding of USDA crop forecasting methods, performance and market impact. A review of USDA's forecasting procedures and methodology confirmed the objectivity and consistency of the forecasting process over time. Month-to-month changes in corn and...

This study investigates empirical methods of generating prediction intervals for WASDE forecasts of corn, soybean, and wheat prices over the 1980/81 through 2006/07 marketing years. Empirical methods use historical forecast errors to estimate forecast error distributions, which are then used to...